The islands of Oceania became known to Europeans after the voyage. Chapter XIV. The peoples of Australia and Oceania at the beginning of European colonization. The settlement of Polynesia and the origin of the Polynesians

The history of the ethnographic study of Oceania by bourgeois science is only one aspect of the history of the colonial policy of European and American states in the South Pacific. The stages of scientific research in Oceania reflect periods in the history of colonial conquests.

General Prerequisites

Who were the explorers of Oceania? These were either European sailors who went to discover new lands with the goal of annexing them to the possessions of their states; or colonial traders, pirates, government officials and agents; or missionaries who paved the way to conquer new lands; or, finally, professional scientists. The latter could set themselves purely scientific goals, but objectively the activities of most of them served the same task: to consolidate the rule of the colonialists on the Pacific Islands - and in many cases they themselves were well aware of this.

This circumstance does not, of course, deprive the factual material that we find in numerous ethnographic descriptions of the peoples of Oceania of scientific interest. On the contrary, this material is of great scientific value. But when using it, the Soviet researcher and the Soviet reader should not lose sight of the need for a strictly critical attitude towards it, since these ethnographic descriptions are not always objective.

First voyages

Europeans first appeared in the Pacific Ocean at the beginning of the 16th century. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailor in Spanish service, set out in 1519 in search of a western sea route to India. Having reached the coast from Spain South America and having passed the strait, which was later named after him, he was the first of the Europeans to enter the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.

In January 1521, he discovered an uninhabited atoll in the northern part of the Tuamotu (Paumotu) group, and in February - another atoll in the southern part of the Marquesas Islands. Heading northwest, Magellan passed between the main group of islands of Polynesia and Hawaiian Islands and on March 6 of the same year arrived at the island of Guam (one of Mariana Islands). He then took his ships to the Philippines.

Magellan's companion, Antonio Pigafetta, left in his notes a brief but interesting description of the inhabitants of the island of Guam. Pigafetta can be considered the first ethnographer of Oceania. However, his description is fragmentary and extremely superficial.

In 1526 Europeans entered Pacific Ocean from the west. The Portuguese George de Menezes sailed from Malacca to the Moluccas, but the wind drove his ship to the shore unknown land. Menezes named this land by the name "Papua" (from the Malay " Tanah Reria" - "land of the curly-haired"). This was New Guinea.

Having conquered Mexico, the Spaniards established sea links between Spanish America and the Philippines, Spain's main base in South-East Asia. In 1542, the Spaniard Villalobos, on his way from Mexico to the Philippines, discovered the Palau Islands (Pelau). Even earlier (1528 and 1529), as a result of unsuccessful attempts by the Spaniard Alvaro de Saavedra to return from the Philippines back to Mexico, some of the islands in the Caroline and Marshall group were discovered.

In the second half of the 16th century. voyages from the shores of Spanish America to the islands of Southeast Asia turned into regular flights. Taking into account the direction of winds and sea currents, Spanish ships sailed to the Philippines in the tropics, and made their return journey in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere, rising beyond the thirtieth and even thirty-fifth parallel.

A number of discoveries were made during the Spanish voyages to the Philippines from Deru.

In 1568 Alvaro Mendaña de Neira discovered Solomon islands. <Он дал им это название, полагая, что нашел источник, откуда царь Соломон получал золото. Позднее, в 1595 г., он вновь отправился на поиски этих островов, но на этот раз безрезультатно. Зато он открыл группу островов, названных им Маркизскими, ряд островов из группы Токелау (Юнион) и один остров из группы Санта-Крус. В этой экспедиции принимал участие капитан Кирос; после смерти Менданьи на острове Санта-Крус во главе экспедиции стал Кирос.

Ten years later, Quiros went on a trip again with Luis Torres. They discovered the islands of Tuamotu, Tahiti, Manihiki and one of the New Hebrides group (Espiritu: Santo, or. Island of the Holy Spirit). From here Quiros returned to Peru, and Torres continued sailing to the Philippines. He discovered the Louisiad Islands, as well as the strait between New Guinea and Australia, named after him.

This marks the end of the period of Spanish discoveries in Oceania. Spain by this time had lost its naval power. Dutch ships are now appearing in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Lemaire and Schouten (1616) discover several small islands north of the Tongan archipelago, see New Britain, but mistake it for part of New Guinea. Abel "Tasman in 1642-1643 discovers Tasmania, New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji; sees New Ireland, but also mistakes it for part of New Guinea.

European ships continue to ply the waters of the Pacific Ocean. ]In 1699, the English sailor and pirate Dampier went on a warship to Oceania to find out the extent of Australia to the east. But he makes the most important discoveries in the area of the Bismarck Archipelago, in particular, for the first time he establishes that New Britain is an independent island, and not part of New Guinea. The strait separating Britain from New Guinea is named after him.

Early ethnographic information (until the end of the 18th century)

The 16th-17th centuries did not provide any detailed descriptions of the islands. The sailors' stories were very inaccurate in their geographical indications; they did not contain information about local residents. One can note, as some exception to this whole gray picture, the book of Father Gobien (1700), which contains information about the indigenous inhabitants of the Mariana Islands - the Chamorros, now completely exterminated. Therefore, Gobien’s book, along with the later work of the Frenchman Freysiye (early 19th century), remains a valuable source on the ethnography of the Mariana Islands.

In 1642-1766, with the exception of the mentioned voyage of Dampier and the voyage of the Dutchman Roggeveen, who discovered Easter Island and Samoa in 1722, no major geographical discoveries were made in Oceania. Spain and Holland could no longer count on capturing new lands. England and France tried to gain a foothold in America and India, fought among themselves for these areas and did not send expeditions to Oceania.

French and English expeditions of the 60-80s of the 18th century.

Only after the Seven Years' War between England and France (1756-1763), which ended in the defeat of France, did these major colonial powers begin to look at Oceania as a possible object of colonial conquest. France, having lost most of its colonies, sought to compensate for its losses. Hence her attempts to penetrate Oceania (the voyages of L.-A. Bougainville, 60s and J.-F. La Perouse, 80s). England, well aware of these attempts, tried to prevent them (Cook's voyages of 1769-1779 and later travels). But since peace had just been concluded between the two countries, the renewed rivalry could not take open forms. The desire to gain a foothold in the Pacific Ocean had to be masked by more specious motives: scientific research. And so the expeditions of Bougainville and Cook act as voyages for the purpose of “purely scientific” discoveries and research.

In 1768, Bougainville finally found the long-wanted Solomon Islands. On the way to them, he visited Tahiti, Samoa, and the New Hebrides. Bougainville compiled the first, quite detailed and colorful, description of Tahiti. He portrayed Tahiti as a kind of happy island, where people live in fertile natural conditions, almost without worrying about food. This description was taken as a basis and further developed in the anti-feudal concept of the “happy savage”, popular in French educational philosophy of the 18th century. and reached its greatest flowering in the worldview of Rousseau and his followers.

Thus, by the time of Cook's first voyage, many groups of islands in Oceania had already been discovered. Nevertheless, the three great voyages of James Cook constituted an important page in the history of the exploration of Oceania.

During his first voyage (1768-1771), Cook circumnavigated New Zealand and discovered a strait between the South and North Islands, named after him. Thus, he established that New Zealand is two independent islands. From New Zealand, Cook sailed to Australia and then sailed his ship from Botany Bay (a bay near present-day Sydney) north, sailed through the Torres Strait, along the Gulf of Carpentaria and headed to Java. Cook's second (1772-1775) and third (1776-1779) voyages were also geographically fruitful. Of the discoveries made during the second voyage, the most important was the discovery of New Caledonia, and during the third - the Hawaiian Islands. He died in Hawaii in 1779.

Cook kept quite detailed notes in diaries, which served as material for describing his travels. In total, Cook spent many months in New Zealand, Tahiti and the Hawaiian Islands, which allowed him and a number of his companions to master Polynesian languages and enter into close relationships with the indigenous people.

On all of Cook's travels, he was accompanied by natural scientists: on the first - J. Banks, on the second - Johann and Georg Forster, on the third - Anderson (who died during the trip), as well as artists.

The diaries and notes of Georg Forster are especially important. His descriptions, however, are characterized by a certain pompous style and a tendency to idealize the life of the oceanic world. In this respect, Forster continues the line of Bougainville. Anderson's notes, which, along with Cook's own notes, constituted the main content of the description of the third voyage, are more sober, rationalistic and, probably, more accurate.

The albums of Cook's expedition provide a fairly detailed and vivid, albeit stylized, picture of the life, way of life, and material culture of the indigenous inhabitants of Oceania at that time.

Finally, during Cook’s travels, ethnographic collections were collected quite conscientiously, which still adorn a number of museums.

La Perouse's voyage began in 1785. He set off on two ships, the Astrolabe and the Busol, visited Easter Island (Rapanui) and left beautiful sketches of stone statues on this island. Then he sailed along the northwestern coast of North America and California, crossed the Pacific Ocean to the Mariana Islands, rose north, trying to go to the mouth of the Amur, reached Kamchatka and from there sent his companion Lesseps to France, giving him his diaries. Then he headed south, visited Samoa, and stopped at Botany Bay (Australia). This was in 1788. The first batch of English exiles had just arrived there, and La Perouse was present at the founding of the colony of Port Jackson. From here he sailed east again and disappeared without a trace. Meanwhile, Lesseps crossed all of Siberia, Europe and reached Paris. Thanks to this, a two-volume description of La Perouse’s journey has reached us.

In 1791, the French revolutionary government sent Captain D'Entrecasteaux to search for La Perouse. D'Entrecasteaux sailed mainly in the region of Melanesia and, as it was later established, passed, unsuspectingly, a few kilometers from the island where the surviving members of La Perouse's team then lived. On the way back, D'Entrecasteaux died, and descriptions of this journey were made by his companions, the most detailed by J. Labillardiere.

Then a number of expeditions were made to search for La Perouse. But only in 1828, Dumont-D'Urville, collecting information about La Perouse from the islands, finally reached the small island of Tikopia, located near the New Hebrides. Here he learned from the islanders that La Perouse's ships had crashed on the coastal reefs near Vanikoro Island. Most of La Perouse's companions were killed, and La Perouse himself with the remnants of the crew sailed on a makeshift ship (in which direction it was not possible to determine) and probably died. However, there were several sailors left on Vanikoro who died just two or three years before the appearance of Dumont-D'Urville.

The geographical discoveries of Europeans in Oceania began with Magellan's first trip around the world, who visited the island of Guam (Mariana Islands) in 1521.

In the 16th century Spanish and Portuguese navigators discovered the Caroline, Marshall, Solomon, Marquesas, Tokelau, and Santa Cruz islands.

The northwestern ledge of New Guinea was first visited by the Portuguese navigator Jorge Minesius in 1526.

After the conquest of Mexico and Peru, the Spaniards organized a series of expeditions to establish a sea route between the western coast of Central and South America and the Philippine Islands. In 1542, the expedition of Ruy Lopez Villalovos set off from the port of Acapulco (Mexico) to the Philippines.

A participant in this expedition, Retes, in 1544 landed on the shores of the island discovered by Minesia, and declared it the possession of the Spanish king, giving it the name New Guinea. Two expeditions of the Spaniard Alvaro Mendaña de Neira in 1567 and 1595. The Solomon Islands, the Marquesas Islands, and a number of islands in South Polynesia were discovered.

Further discoveries of the islands of Polynesia and Melanesia were made by the Spanish expedition of Quiros in 1605. Quiros claimed to have discovered the great southern continent and gave it the name “Australia of the Holy Spirit”.

The captain of one of the ships of this expedition, Torres, after Quiros returned to Mexico, walked along the southern coast of New Guinea and discovered the strait separating this island from true Australia.

Arriving in the Philippine Islands in 1607, Torres presented a report on his discoveries to the Spanish authorities in Manila. He proved that New Guinea is not part of the southern mainland, but a huge island separated from other large islands (in fact from Australia) by a strait. The Spaniards kept this discovery secret.

150 years after Torres's journey, during the Seven Years' War, the British landed on the island of Luzon and seized the government archives of Manila. That's how Torres' report came into their hands.

In 1768 | English navigator James Cook received a special government assignment to explore Oceania. He again “discovered” the islands of Oceania and the strait between Australia and New Guinea, which had long been known to the Spaniards.

Cook also discovered a number of new islands and explored the eastern coast of Australia.

At the same time, the English scientist Alexander Dalrymil published secret Spanish documents captured in Manila, after which Cook himself was forced to admit that the strait between New Guinea and Australia was known to the Spaniards already at the beginning of the 17th century. In the second half of the 18th century. this strait was named Torres Strait.

During the century and a half between the discovery of Torres and the voyage of James Cook, a number of Dutch navigators - Eendracht, Edel, Yates, Thyssen and others visited various parts of the coast of Australia, which received in the 17th century. The name is New Holland.

In 1642, the Governor-General of the Dutch possessions in Southeast Asia, Van Diemen, instructed Abel Tasman to circumnavigate New Holland from the south.

During this voyage, Tasman saw an island which he named Van Diemen's Zulu (now Tasmania). Having passed along the eastern coast of New Zealand, he discovered the archipelagos of Tonga and Fiji and, having rounded New Guinea from the north, returned to Batavia.

Tasman Expedition 1642-1643 refuted the assumption that New Holland is part of the great Antarctic continent, but created an error. different idea of the outlines of Australia: Tasman considered the islands of Tasmania and New Guinea to be protrusions of a single continent of New Holland.

James Cook surveyed the coasts of New Zealand and the east coast of Australia during his three voyages in 1768-1779. At the same time, he discovered the island of New Caledonia and numerous islands of Polynesia.

Cook gave the eastern part of Australia the name New South Wales. French navigators (Bougainville, La Perouse, etc.) also made a number of voyages and discoveries in Oceania in the 60-80s of the 18th century.

Beginning in 1788, for more than half a century, the English government used Australia as a place of exile for criminal and political offenders.

The administration of the convict colony seized vast expanses of fertile land, which were cultivated by the forced labor of exiled settlers.

The indigenous population was pushed into the deserts of central Australia, where they died out or were exterminated.

Its number, which reached by the time the British appeared at the end of the 18th century. 250-300 thousand, decreased by the end of the next century to 70 thousand people. The British colonialists acted with particular cruelty on the island of Tasmania. Here they organized real round-ups of people, who were killed like wild animals. As a result, the island's population was destroyed to the last person.

Little by little, English colonies formed in Australia, representing in language, economy and culture a continuation of the capitalist metropolis.

At first, these colonies were not connected in any way, and only by the beginning of the 20th century. formed the Australian Federation, which received the rights of the English dominion.

The economic and political development of England's Australian colonies dates back to the subsequent period of modern history.

– Oceans of Steel

YouTube: Alekseev - Oceans of Steel

They melt in the wind, so what?
We are shattered into millions of pieces.
I found you from a thousand wild moons,
I like it so much.
I like the road pulse,
I like your clouds.
Don’t breathe in so much of it, so be it,
And this magical sunset.

I like it, I like it.
We'll go crazy for each other.

They thought we would fall into oceans of steel,
I like it, I like it.
We'll go crazy for each other.
Kiss, because I can’t cope without you.

I endlessly want to breathe you.
And my fire will never end.
Hold me, I can't cope without you.
I like to burn to the ground in your hands.

They thought we would fall into oceans of steel,
I like it, I like it.
We'll go crazy for each other.
Kiss, because I can’t cope without you.

Kiss, because I can’t cope without you...
They became oceans,
I like it, I like it...
I found you…
They became oceans, they became oceans...

They thought we would fall into oceans of steel,
I like it, I like it.
We'll go crazy for each other.
Kiss, because I can’t cope without you.

The song premiered on October 4, 2016.
Music by: K. Pavlov
Lyrics by: K. Pavlov
Arrangement: Mikhail Koshevoy

The plot of the video is reminiscent of an action film, in the center of which is the story of the indigo people. The idea was inspired by ALEKSEEV’s mysterious dream, which inspired the famous director Alan Badoev.

A few days before filming, I dreamed that I was walking along a corridor and opened doors with my eyes, many doors. I woke up when the door opened in the room. I was alone at home! – share ALEKSEEV. - That feeling when you don’t understand whether this is still a dream or already in reality, a thin line between two worlds. That same day I told this story to Alan and he came up with the idea for the video.”

The plot centers on ALEKSEEV and his girlfriend – extraordinary indigo people who are locked in a special institute. But their energy and strength are much more powerful than all the frames and walls in which they have to be. In order to free themselves, they need to prove to the professor their most important super-power, which not everyone is given - to love!

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